Australian judge David Ashton-Lewis, whose Commission of Inquiry report has produced something of a constitutional crisis, is said to love the writing of Somerset Maugham.
That’s why he named one of his children after the British playwright-novelist-turned-spy, according to someone who knew the judge from his first tour of duty in Fiji from 1992 to 1996.
For those who came in late: Justice Ashton-Lewis’s damning conclusion in his report was that the appointment last September of Suva lawyer Barbara Malimali to lead the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption “was orchestrated to protect political actors and senior public officials, and to derail corruption investigations”.
He recommended that the Police prosecute Ms Malimali and nine others, including Chief Justice Salesi Temo and Chief Registrar Tomasi Bainivalu. There are a variety of accusations and combinations of allegations, including lying under oath and/or perverting or obstructing the course of justice.
No charges have been filed yet; Police are still considering the COI Report.
The judge’s many supporters, including Graham Davis, a former Qorvis spin doctor hired by disgraced prime minister Frank Bainimarama to buff up his image after the military coup in 2006, have been howling in constant outrage that no one has even been suspended.
Ms Malimali, of course, has been fired (more on that later). Other than that, the only punishment thus far has been Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s decision to sack Attorney-General Graham Leung (by Viber message) at the end of May. Mr Leung is adamant he did no wrong in the Malimali hiring process and strongly denies any criminal conduct.
We know the Supreme Court judge likes Somerset Maugham, but what would Maugham make of Justice Ashton-Lewis?
Maugham is barely remembered today, but was one of the 20th century’s most successful English writers.
Born in 1874 and trained as a doctor, at the start of World War I in 1914, Maugham was too old to enlist in the Army. So he joined the Red Cross on the Western Front before becoming a spy-runner in Switzerland. Maugham describes wartime spycraft brilliantly in Ashenden, a series of short stories that inspired future spy story writers Ian Fleming, Graham Greene and Len Deighton.
Maugham was recruited by the original head of MI6 – Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming – whose initial ‘C’, always signed in green ink on paperwork, continues to be used as shorthand for the head of MI6. Maugham fictionalised this so that Ashenden’s boss was ‘R’ while Fleming used ‘M’.
At the war’s midpoint, between late 1916 and into 1917, Maughan journeyed to Hawaii, American Samoa, Samoa, Fiji and Tahiti.
Some of his most popular work was inspired by this extraordinary trip weaving in and around the Pacific.
The short stories that Maugham wrote were published as The Trembling of a Leaf, taken from a French literary critic who wrote: “Extreme happiness is hardly separated by a trembling leaf from extreme despair: is that not life?’
The Pacific was a revelatory experience for Maugham, travelling in public for the first time with his lover Gerald Haxton — being “out”. Maugham took great comfort observing how relaxed the local cultures were with fa’afafine or their equivalents elsewhere in the Pacific.
His most celebrated work from that trip is the short story ‘Rain’ published in 1921. The story’s characters, like Maugham, become trapped in Pago Pago, sectioned in quarantine and enduring the relentless assault of a never-ending tropical downpour under corrugated iron roofs.
Was the judge a spy?
Maugham’s grounding in espionage, he may have raised an eyebrow at Justice Ashton-Lewis’s tradecraft, specifically for saying during the COI hearings that he worked for the Australian spy agency.
The transcript of the hearing (which appears now to be freely available to anyone at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Mgxj0OmpMbDOq0YHcNZfXSxJveLFmFbr?usp=sharing ) shows Ms Malimali’s lawyer, Tanya Waqanika, saying that she had to travel to the New Zealand capital, Wellington. Justice Ashton-Lewis had words of warning.
“I do a lot of work for a thing called ACIS, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service,’ he said (either the judge or the transcribers unhelpfully mangled the acronyms of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission [ASIC] with the spy service, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO)).
He continued: “That is the equivalent of the CIA and they liaise under the Five Eyes Agreement with Canadian Secret Intelligence, US CIA, New Zealand Secret and British MI6.
“So when you arrive in Wellington, don’t be surprised if a number of men in suits come up to you and say ‘is your name Tanya Waqanika?’ And you will say, yes. You’ll be quickly shown a wallet with a badge in it and they will say, we have some reports about you. ”
We don’t know if Ms Waqanika’s visit to Wellington was interrupted by men with badges.
Maugham, with a number of senior English lawyers in his family, would surely have been delighted by the dramatic possibilities of Justice Ashton-Lewis’s CV, including the intrigues over his use of the letters “SC” after his name.
Jutice Ashton-Lewis is an Australian lawyer. “SC” in Australia means “Senior Counsel”, the equivalent of a King’s Counsel. Any of us who have been around lawyers know that King’s Counsel and Senior Counsel are senior barristers, sometimes known as “silks”.
Their expertise means they’re also associated with eye-watering bills of cost.
However, they must be specifically appointed to those positions on the recommendation of a bar association or other official body.
Apparently, no bar association or law society in Australia, New Zealand or Papua New Guinea has any record of the titles “SC”, or “KC” or “QC” being conferred on the judge.
So the “SC” claim cannot be verified. Nor can the Judge’s claim that he received an award from Queen Elizabeth II for services to law.
Social media “activist” Alexandra Forwood, whose multiple complaints to FICAC seem to have triggered the whole COI, posted on Facebook in December last year that Justice Ashton-Lewis’s award from the Queen proved he was not the sort of person who could be corrupted.
But nobody is quite sure what this award is. Normally if you get an award from the Queen you get to use more letters after your name — “OBE” (for “Order of the British Empire”) or “CMG” (Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George”). Et cetera.
Other than “SC”, Justice Ashton-Lewis doesn’t seem to use any other such letters except the LLB (which refers to his Bachelor of Law degree).
The normal way to verify awards from the late Queen in her time, or the King now, is to search the online London Gazette for the person’s name. If you do that with public figures we all know, like the Prime Minister for example, you can see his name and the year he was awarded his OBE [1981] or the year in which former Tui Vuda Ratu Sir Josaia Tavaiqia received his knighthood (1985 – in the same proclamation as the former Fiji Times editor, Sir Len Usher).
Justice Ashton-Lewis does appear in the London Gazette but only for the reassignment to his name of two extinct titles that he appears to have purchased through a company called Manorial Counsel Ltd.
The GPH connection
Justice Ashton-Lewis’s home for the duration of the COI was Suva’s Grand Pacific Hotel.
This was also Maugham’s base when he was in Fiji. Sitting there a century earlier and looking across towards Namosi and Naitasiri and the foreboding hinterland of Viti Levu, Maugham wrote in his book A Writer’s Life, ‘out there you feel there is a strange and secret life … Aboriginal and darkly cruel.’
He noted how the GPH was filled with visitors who had come to Fiji filled with romantic notions, but instead spent their days drinking, “bored, lonely and disillusioned”.
Maugham’s language and attitude around race was toe-curling by today’s standards (although that was true of all of his contemporaries). Maugham reported the GPH’s ‘servants are Hindu and vaguely hostile … the food is very bad but the rooms are pleasant, fresh and cool’.
So, Maugham may have been comfortable with Justice Ashton-Lewis quizzing several of the lighter-skinned lawyers appearing at the COI about their race. Once he had confirmed that they had some European blood, he referred to them as ‘fruit salads’, including his counsel assisting Janet Mason.
“Fruit salad” is a nickname unique to Fiji, offensive to many people when used by an outsider of those with mixed parentage.
Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, a friend of Justice Ashton-Lewis since the 1990s, told the media that anyone offended about the ‘Fruit Salad’ reference should complain directly to the judge.
But back to FICAC
Barbara Malimali’s arrest by FICAC on September 5 last year, on her first day in the job as head of FICAC, was based on three separate email allegations from the same person, the serial complainer Alexandra Forwood.
Ms Forwood was adopted from the Dilkusha orphanage in Nausori by former Suva restauranteur Peter Bott, another extraordinary post-colonial figure in Fiji’s history.
Bott’s establishment, Scott’s Restaurant in central Suva, was where Fiji’s political and business powerbrokers wined and dined for generations. Scott’s was modelled on the prewar restaurant at the Hotel Meurice on Paris’s rue de Rivoli where the Paris-born, French-speaking Maugham regularly entertained.
Ms Forwood described herself in her COI evidence (it’s all there in the transcript) as a social media activist. She also claimed (but refused to give any detail) that she had been trained by the Israeli Government, including in forensic auditing and investigation work.
Her multiple complaints to FICAC and her COI evidence included outlandish allegations of corruption, theft and abuse of office against a many prominent people.
The Chief Justice, for instance, was asked to admit that he was in fact another person and had served time in prison for armed robbery. This he denied.
Ms Forwood had emailed two complaints about Ms Malimali on April 8 and 9 2024. The COI Report admits FICAC did nothing to investigate either allegation until rumours emerged in late August that Ms Malimali would get the FICAC Commissioner’s job.
FICAC suddenly cranked up its investigations, raiding the office of the Electoral Commission (of which Ms Malimali was chair) and summoning Fiji Elections Office officials to give evidence late into the night of 4 September, the night before Ms Malimali was due to begin her new job.
It was Frances Pulewai, the deputy FICAC Commissioner, who led the arrest of Ms Malimali the following day, September 5.
Ms Pulewai had also applied for the Commissioner’s position but not made the shortlist. It was to her email address that Forwood’s FICAC complaints were sent.
September 5 might have been one of those moments of extreme happiness as foretold in The Trembling of a Leaf.
Despite the 2007 Act creating both positions, FICAC had never once had both a Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner in office at the same time. Until, that was, September 5 last year.
Having both FICAC leadership positions filled for the first time would surely be cause for an even bigger than usual morning tea, the set-piece staple of all new appointments in the Fiji Government
But, less than 60 minutes into that first-time situation, one office-holder had arrested the other. Extreme despair followed.
Unlike the brevity of Maugham’s writings, the FICAC COI saga promises to run and run: famously, Ms Malimali is fighting her dismissal in court and others named in the COI Report are now closeted with their lawyers drafting judicial review applications to attack it.
How FICAC is going to be made fit for purpose remains as elusive as ever.
- CHARLIE CHARTERS is a former journalist at The Fiji Times who now works in the sports marketing industry based in Hong Kong. He has known Wylie Clarke, one of those named in COI Report, for more than 30 years and Clarke is his wife’s lawyer. This article has not been shared or discussed with Clarke at any point. Charlie’s mother Shirley is completing a book that will show that Maugham’s journeying around the Pacific in the middle of WW1 was on the specific direction of British military intelligence.
